
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
Morgan Housel Admit it: No one has any idea what's going on
April 22, 2013
US man departing country arrested on terror charges
Barbara Williams: An unorthodox but growing treatment in a 9-year-old's battle against cancer
April 19, 2013
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama's visit to Israel had no impact on public opinion or government policy
Morgan Housel: Gold collapse: The start of something big?
Pete Spotts: Livable super-Earths? Two candidates among Kepler's latest finds
April 17, 2013
Shira Rubin: Too much of a good thing? 'Palestinians' realize downside of foreign aid boom
Morgan Housel: BAD NEWS: EVERYONE IS RIGHT!
April 15, 2013
Kristen Chick: Egyptian Christians respond with harsh words to attack -- rocks, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire -- against main cathedral
Marcy Darnovsky and Karuna Jaggar: High Court to decide if you should own your DNA
Howard LaFranchi: US bracing for more Russian blowback after taking action against 18 more human rights violators
April 12, 2013
Mark Clayton: New cybersecurity bill: Privacy threat or crucial band-aid?
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom: Jackie Robinson's Friend, Hank Greenberg; CNN's Jake Tapper; Texas County in the News is named for 19thC. Jewish soldier and Congressman
The Kosher Gourmet by Susan Russo: FRUITY QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS: A flavorful, colorful and edible vessel of delicately fluffy, mildly nutty filling combined with chewy apricots, tangy cherries, and crunchy pistachios
April 10, 2013
Peter Grier: North Korean missiles: Could US shoot them down?
Morgan Housel: Warning: Don't waste your capital being fooled by profit prophets
Donald Hensrud, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: Take vitamin supplements with caution --- even approved, they may actually do damage
Eryn Brown: 74 DNA discoveries move cure closer for three cancers
April 8, 2013
Jonathan Tobin: What Part of No Preconditions Do American Jews Not Get?
Fred Weir: Is Putin finally trading his own party for a new power base?
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Sept. 28, 2006
/ 6 Tishrei, 5767
Shofar, so good
By
Suzanne Fields
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A friend of mine sends a short video as a New Year's greeting, celebrating the beginning of the year 5767 on the Jewish calendar. It depicts a driver, frustrated because the remote control for his garage door won't work. He bangs on the remote with his hand, his head, his nose and his chin. Nothing happens. A Hasidic Jew drives up, with his black hat and long black locks curled in front of his ears, rolls down the window of his car and aims a shofar, the long ram's horn played at the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He blows the horn with a piercing shriek. The garage door opens.
The greeting: "These High Holy Days, stick with what works. Shofar, so good."
Such humor is stock in trade for the Jews, who have always mixed the sacred with the sacrilegious. If not necessarily a saving grace, humor acts as a palliative to tragedy. Jews have certainly needed it through the centuries. "Oppressed people tend to be witty," wrote Saul Bellow, and Jews know a lot about oppression, too. Humor soothes pain with laughter, though the laughter that brings tears to the eyes may reflect anguish and despair, too.
The shofar is not generally an instrument for humor, but it calls attention to the spiritual nature with appeals to joy, hope and trust, as well as awe, fear and trembling. A new generation of comic writers tries to add humor with edginess to the sounds of the shofar, aiming to revive religious traditions and express concern over Israel.
My greeting card was made by a group called Jewish Impact Films Fellowship, established in Los Angeles to bring freshness to faith. Back in the days of vaudeville, Jewish comics knew how to exploit suffering for humor, building on Shalom Aleichem's dialogue, "G-d, I know we are Your chosen people, but couldn't You choose somebody else for a change?"
Political correctness, which is out to dull everything, finds ethnicity in humor an embarrassment. Molly Goldberg, like Amos and Andy, had to go. (Lum 'n' Abner, which mocks only rural Southerners, can still be heard on occasional small-town radio.) Self-mocking with Yiddish accents or idiosyncratic ungrammatical English was sacrificed first on the altar of assimilation, then later with an appeal to an arrogant multiculturalism. The folk wisdom inherent in the depiction of Jews to deflate the pomposity of the more powerful lost its bite.
Now the bite is back, albeit in different forms. You can start with comic books to find out how. Rabbi Simcha Weinstein has written "Up, Up and Oy Vey," a book about comic heroes inspired by religious themes created by Jewish authors. "Only a Jew would think of a name like Clark Kent," he tells the New York Post. "He's the bumbling, nebbish, Jewish stereotype. He's Woody Allen. Can't get the girl. Can't get the job at the same time, he has this tremendous heritage he can't suppress."
Rabbi Simcha writes that the dual identity of characters like Superman and Spiderman reflects the longings of children of immigrants who desire to live two lives, "privately as a Jew and publicly as an American." The Hebrew Bible provides creative inspiration in supermen like Samson, who brings down the temple of the Philistines, and David, who destroys Goliath with a slingshot.
After the horror of the Holocaust, comedy became a rationed commodity for many Jews. They agreed with Theodor Adorno, the German philosopher, who wrote that "After Auschwitz it is barbaric to write poetry." The philosopher's point was that only silence could express the magnitude of such human tragedy. Hitler was no laughing matter. But then Mel Brooks, who wrote "The Producers," with its chorus line of big-booted Nazi women crooning "Springtime for Hitler," punctured that taboo, too.
Controversy exploded when the Jewish Museum in New York held an exhibition called "Mirroring Evil," which turned themes of the Holocaust into pop art, including a concentration camp made of LEGO. Other critics identified the show as expressing the irrepressible ability of the Jews to rise from the ashes of Hitler's evil.
Two weeks ago, more than 60 years after the Nazis shut down Germany's only rabbinical school, three rabbis were ordained in Dresden's new synagogue. "After the Holocaust, many people could never have imagined that Jewish life in Germany could blossom again," said German president Horst Koehler. "That is why the first ordination of rabbis in Germany is a very special event indeed."
That's something to blow the shofar about on these High Holy days. Happy New Year to you, too.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.
Suzanne Fields Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|